To Climb the Nose of an Indian

The day Tyler and I arrived in San Pedro we declared two goals we needed to accomplish before leaving. One was to climb the Nariz de Indio mountain, and the other was to mount the Volcano San Pedro. This weekend we climbed former. Indian Nose is so named because the mountain range looks like a prone native, check out this view of it from our roof:



We rounded up some likeminded adventurers hitched three rides on the back of pickups to Santa Elana and started trudging up. Since we really hadn´t the foggiest clue where we were going and were too cheap to hire a guide I took over as the fearless leader and led us up a cornfield that went up the steep slope. Upon reaching the top of the farm, muddy and tired, we realized that the trail ended far from the peak. We ultimately got some advice from a farmer, tried anew, and worked our way up to the top. We stumbled across a native ceremony on the top so we had to be quiet while we ate a lunch of fruit.


*Those of you new to Flickr, if you click some of the pictures like the one above you´ll see notes we add to them labeling things in them. Try it!

And drank in the view:



The pickup ride up was harrowing, winding up a twisting mountain road in a truck that could barely rev so we decided to walk down the long way and go straight to San Juan. Along the way Tyler came across a whole field of high altitude Guatemalan coffee; something he has sold tons of in Albany.



We made it home totally exhausted but that night we heard merrily fast music coming from next door to Casa Rosario so we investigated. We stumbled into a free neighborhood dance party complete with a great band and friendly locals and danced well into the next morning.